Chronicler Zack Brown reports on the latest news, views, dilemmas, and developments within the Linux kernel community.

Land of the fries, home of the beer? Belgium has more to offer than that! In 2001 the LBW went to Bouillon, and this year the geeks returned to the small country in Western Europe – specifically to Diksmuide in West Flanders.

Patent law is a very imperfect tool for establishing moral culpability. Whether you favor patents or not, it is important to face the fact that patent law is a construct of the business world. Patents protect opportunities for patent holders and restrict opportunities for others – all for some supposedly greater purpose, we are told, but in any case, none of this ever has the clarity that will allow you to point your finger at a violator as you would at someone who stole your car. So I don’t have a lot of faith in patents, but I still have a feeling you’ll do better in life if you come up with your own solutions.

• Android gains market share
• VMware Workstation
• Perforce on Demand
• openSUSE 12.2 released
• CUDA 5 rc
• Web Foundation index measures world
• New Z shell release first since 2004

SpringSource Releases New Tool Suites

Codethink Releases Baserock 1.1

PostgreSQL 9.2 Released

ROSA Announces Enterprise Distribution

Mission, vision, and value statements can help define small businesses, corporations, and movements – including FOSS.

OSCON always manages to change with the times without giving up the original vision of community and new ideas.

News of Google’s employee survival benefit surfaced recently, much to the amazement of bloggers, who were all out on the prowl for some tech news. In an interview with Forbes Magazine’s Meghan Casserly, Google Chief People Officer Lazlo Bock spelled out the terms. If a Google employee dies, the company will give a surviving spouse or domestic partner half the employee’s salary for up to 10 years.